In January 2022, six months after the publication of the Pegasus Project, the New York Times revealed that the CIA bought NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware for Djibouti as a way to combat terrorism (the government of Djibouti told the Times it had never acquired or used the spyware, and the CIA declined to comment).
In April 2022, The New Yorker reported that according to WhatsApp, members of Djibouti’s government were targeted with Pegasus, including Prime Minister Abdoulkader Kamil Mohamed and its minister of Interior Hassan Omar.